I could try reading the Finance Act. That would surely give an impression of quite implacable respectability. I must, at some stage, give some attention to the Finance Act: I promised William, if he would allow me to go to Venice, that my Opinion on Schedule 7 would be ready within forty-eight hours of returning. Yet somehow, despite the interest of its subject-matter and the elegance of its style, the Finance Act does not at the moment appeal to me.
The only refuge seems to be the lavatory. I don’t suppose I can stay there for the rest of the journey – other passengers would become vexed; but it would be a temporary respite from the Major. And I should be able to get a look, on the way, at the face of the thin young man.
‘The next paragraph,’ said Selena, ‘is rather difficult to read. The writing, even by Julia’s standards, is unusually irregular. She also seems to have spilt gin over it. Do get some more coffee, Cantrip.’
Ah, Selena, Selena. ‘The face of the thin young man’ I have written, as if of some commonplace and worldly thing. How casually my pen first wrote that phrase, not knowing of what it wrote: with what trembling ardour do I inscribe it now. ‘The face of the thin young man’ – ah, Selena, such a face. A face for which Narcissus might be forsworn and the Moon forget Endymion. The translucent skin, the winging eyebrows, the angelic mouth, the celestial profile – lament no more, Selena, the drabness of our age and the poverty of our arts – over the time that has brought forth such a profile not Athens, not Rome, not the Renaissance in all its glory shall triumph: Praxiteles and Michelangelo kneel in admiration.
I grow too faint with passion to continue. It is a dreadful thing, at such a moment, to lack the benefit of your advice; but I shall post this immediately on arrival, so that you may know as soon as possible of the agitation which now affects my spirits. I remain, in the meantime,
Yours, as always
Julia
PS. The above, I need hardly say, is entirely without prejudice to my devotion to the virtuous and beautiful Ragwort, to whom please convey my respectful regards.
‘I think Julia’s quite struck with this blond chap,’ said Cantrip – he is noted for his insight into the feminine heart. ‘She hasn’t gone on like this about anyone since that Greek barman they took on to help out in Guido’s in June.’
‘If then,’ said Selena. ‘I don’t think she’s mentioned Praxiteles since the out-of-work actor in February.’
‘The whole letter,’ said Ragwort, ‘is perfectly disgraceful. I am very relieved that we have reached the end of it.’
I would not impute to any of my readers a less refined sensibility than belongs to Ragwort, or for any frivolous reason risk offending it. I have nonetheless thought it right to set out Julia’s letter in extenso, containing, as it does, descriptions of various individuals who will be mentioned later in my narrative, including her supposed victim.
3
There was a coolness. Selena said that she did not in the least blame Timothy but added that one might have known how Henry would go on about it. Ragwort was satisfied if the Bar Council saw no objection – and confessed to a little surprise on hearing they had not been asked. Cantrip used the expressions ‘blackleg’ and ‘teacher’s pet’.
All this because Timothy was going to Venice – unlike Julia, at someone else’s expense. His absence from coffee on my first morning in London had been due, as the attentive reader may recall, to an application for his advice by the senior partner in a leading firm of solicitors. The senior partner – Mr Tiddley or Mr Whatsit, I am not sure which – was one of the trustees of a discretionary trust. ‘Quite a nice little trust,’ the senior partner had said modestly; worth, on the most recent valuation, just under a million pounds. The principal beneficiary, advised to take certain steps to mitigate his prospective liability to capital transfer tax, had been found recalcitrant. Timothy’s assistance was required to persuade him of the seriousness and urgency of the matter.
To do so, moreover, in person. Attempts to explain in writing – and a number of long letters had already been sent on the subject – had been met with an obdurate refusal to perceive the need for action. It happened that the beneficiary, though normally resident in Cyprus, would shortly be going to Venice to settle the affairs of his recently deceased great-aunt, who had made her home in that city: an admirable occasion, thought the senior partner, while his mind was directed to such matters, for him to consider also his position under the English trust, established by his late grandfather. It would therefore be most kind if Timothy – for a fee, it went without saying, which would reflect not only the intrinsic value of his advice, but also the inconvenience to him – ‘Oh, quite,’ said Ragwort – of being absent for several days from London – if Timothy would go to Venice. Timothy, kindness itself, had consented.
‘And your accommodation,’ said Ragwort, ‘will also be in a style commensurate with the value of your advice. Danieli’s, I suppose. Or perhaps the Gritti Palace?’
It appeared that the estate of the deceased great-aunt included a little palazzo just off the Grand Canal. The beneficiary had been good enough to indicate that Timothy would be welcome to stay there.
‘Most agreeable,’ said Selena, wrinkling her nose.
‘Delightful,’ said Ragwort, raising an eyebrow.
‘Makes one sick,’ said Cantrip.
The thing that made Selena wrinkle her nose, Ragwort raise an eyebrow and Cantrip sick was not mere envy of Timothy’s good fortune. What chiefly irked them was its effect on Henry, who for several days had not ceased to comment on it as an instance of the wonderful rewards heaped on the just – being those who do not spend their mornings drinking coffee – by comparison with the unjust – being those who do. In the eternal struggle of Counsel against Clerks to gain a moment in which the former may call their souls their own, some yards of ground had been lost. Coffees were curtailed, lunches abbreviated, dinner engagements cancelled.
But they are tolerant, good-natured young people in 62 New Square, their minds always open to equitable compromise. Upon Timothy’s undertaking that on the eve of his departure, that is to say on Friday, he would buy dinner for all those adversely affected, it was agreed that no more should be said of the matter. I pointed out that I myself had some claim to be among his guests; to which he answered, very nicely, that he had not imagined I could think myself excluded.
We were to meet in the Corkscrew, a wine bar on the north side of High Holborn, popular on the grounds of proximity with the members of Lincoln’s Inn. Our entertainment was to include two further letters from Julia, which even Selena, in the conditions obtaining in Chambers, had not yet had time to read.
At seven o’clock, I was the first to arrive. I sat down at one of the little round oak tables and lit the candle provided for its illumination. The bar of the Corkscrew is designed for those who prefer a certain murkiness: long and narrow in construction, it admits, even at noon, the minimum of daylight; most of what does get in is absorbed in the dark ceiling and wood-panelled walls; there is left, after this, just so much as may comfortably be reflected in the surface of a polished table or the glint of a wine glass. To light a candle there is almost in itself enough to inspire in those gathered round it a sense of cheerful conspiracy.
I did not have long to wait for company. Timothy, arriving with Ragwort and Selena, stopped at the bar to acquire a bottle of Nierstein and a bowl of biscuits. The other two joined me at once in the circle of candlelight.
‘Why biscuits?’ I asked. ‘Timothy is just going to buy us an excellent dinner.’
‘We’ll be eating late,’ said Ragwort. ‘It’s Cantrip’s night for reading the Scuttle.’
It is thought prudent by the proprietors of the Daily Scuttle that their publication, before it goes to press, should be read by a lawyer. They are subject to the endearing superstition that they will protect themselves, by this ritual, against all claims and proceedings for libel, blasphemy, obscenity, sedition, contempt of court, scandalum magnatum or any other cri
me or civil wrong known to English law. In the evenings this work is contracted out on a freelance basis to various indigent members of the Junior Bar. Though the law of libel and so forth is not peculiarly within the province of the Chancery Bar, the post of Friday reader, for reasons now lost in antiquity, is always held by one of the members of 62 New Square. It is currently occupied by Cantrip. If hunger compelled us to begin dinner without him, good fellowship would not allow us to end it in like manner. We would therefore be dining late. In the meantime, the Corkscrew would enjoy our custom.
It is poignant to reflect that as we sat drinking Nierstein in the convivial quarter-light of the Corkscrew poor Julia must already have been trying to persuade the Venetian police that the presence of her Finance Act at the bedside of the corpse – but I must not anticipate the orderly development of my narrative. We drank untroubled by knowledge of Julia’s difficulties: it was the last occasion for some time that we were able to do so.
As to the unhappy consequences of Timothy’s going to Venice, no more, of course, was to be said. Still –
‘Are you really sure it is proper,’ said Ragwort, ‘to see the lay client without a solicitor present? To explain, you know, in words of one syllable what you are telling him?’
‘And in words of four syllables what he is telling you,’ said Selena.
‘Quite sure,’ said Timothy. ‘One’s instructing solicitor is, of course, entitled to be present, but he may quite properly waive his rights in the matter.’
‘Well, if you say so,’ said Ragwort, ‘then naturally we accept it. Since you are buying us dinner. But what seems so strikingly unconventional is that you should go to the client. It is surely a long-established rule of etiquette that the client comes to Counsel. It has always been my understanding that only in the most exceptional cases, such as grave disability— ’
‘My client,’ said Timothy, ‘does, in a sense, suffer from a disability. He can’t face coming to England. He spent his thirteenth year at an English public school and this inspired in him such an aversion to this country that he has since refused to set foot in it.’
‘How eccentric,’ said Selena. The honey of her voice was seasoned, as it were, with lemon: herself much attached to her native land, she is inclined to take personally any disparagement of it. ‘If he doesn’t mind living in Cyprus, dodging the crossfire between the Turks and the Greeks, it is quite absurd of him to be afraid of coming to England. And if he is prepared to go to Italy, which, as we all know, is at present in the grip of a vast crime wave – ’
‘Is it?’ said Ragwort.
‘My dear Ragwort, of course it is,’ said Selena. ‘Crime in Italy is a national industry. If an Italian isn’t murdering someone in Calabria, it’s only because he’s too busy kidnapping someone else in Lombardy. Or embezzling public funds in Friuli. Or stealing little-known pictures from churches in Verona. Or burgling the Courthouse at Monza. That, at any rate, if The Times is to be relied on, is how they have spent the past week, and we have no reason to think it untypical.’
‘My client,’ said Timothy, ‘is not troubled, as I understand it, by the possibility of being murdered, kidnapped or embezzled. His objection to England is founded on the belief that the temperature never rises above forty degrees Fahrenheit, that the only food available is tepid rice pudding and that the population consists entirely of bullying prefects and ragging fourth-formers.’
‘I wonder if it’s wise,’ said Selena, ‘to send you to talk to him, Timothy. You do look very English, you know. You’ll probably remind him of his former geometry master and he’ll run away and hide.’
I seem to have omitted to give my readers any description of my former pupil. It is true, however, that he does have that long-boned, angular, straw-coloured look which is widely regarded as characteristic of the Englishman.
‘Precisely what is it,’ I asked, ‘that you have to persuade him to do?’
‘I have to persuade him,’ said Timothy, ‘to become domiciled in England before the 19th of December of this year.’ He leant back comfortably in his chair, not looking like a man discouraged by the difficulty of the task before him. ‘On that date, which is his twenty-fifth birthday, the discretionary trust will come to an end. My client, as the only surviving descendant of his late grandfather, will scoop the jackpot. The capital transfer tax payable on that event, if my client is then domiciled outside the United Kingdom, will be something on the order of £450,000. If, on the other hand, he were then to be domiciled in England, tax would, of course, be charged at a concessionary rate under the transitional provisions of paragraph 14 to Schedule 5 of the Finance Act 1975 and he would have to pay only fifteen per cent of that sum.’
‘That certainly seems,’ I said, ignoring all this talk of schedules and paragraphs, ‘to be a substantial inducement. But will it be enough to overcome his repugnance to this country?’
‘Oh, my dear Hilary,’ said Timothy, smiling at me, ‘he doesn’t have to come to England. Merely to become domiciled here.’
I perceived with chagrin that I had been led into a trap. Timothy’s smile, to a casual observer, might have seemed unobjectionable, even attractive. I, knowing him better, identified it at once as that smile of enigmatic complacency which signifies that he knows something I don’t about the law and is going to explain it to me. It would be irritating, heaven knows, in anyone – in a former pupil it is quite intolerable. Though a member of the Faculty of Law, I am an historian rather than a lawyer: my interest in the principles of English law wanes with the Middle Ages. I do not doubt – for his clients’ sake I devoutly hope – that Timothy knows more than I do of modern English law: it is nothing for him to look complacent or enigmatic about.
Still, I remembered that he was buying me dinner. I allowed him, therefore, as he clearly wished to do, to give a little lecture on the law of domicile. The nub of which was, as I recall, that if you are resident in one country but intend to spend your last years in another, you will not necessarily be domiciled in either, but rather in the place where your father was domiciled at the time of your birth. If he, at that time, happened to be in a similar equivocal condition, then your domicile will be that of your paternal grandfather at the time your father was born. And so ad infinitum, if Timothy has explained the thing correctly, through any number of ancestors of migrant disposition, till domicile is finally established in the Garden of Eden.
In the present case, however, such extremes were not called for. His client’s grandfather, the founder of the nice little trust, had lived all his days in England and shown no desire to wander. The client’s father, though serving, when the boy was born, in the British Army in Cyprus, and married to a Greek girl, had written home numerous letters, still extant and available for inspection by the Capital Taxes Office, expressing his ultimate intention to return to England. They had both behaved, from Timothy’s point of view, admirably: it was only the client himself who was being difficult.
‘But surely,’ said Ragwort, ‘your task is very simple, Timothy. It is clear that your client has an English domicile of origin. Whenever he is not domiciled anywhere else he will be domiciled in England. If he is resident in Cyprus, all he has to do is form an intention to retire, in his declining years, to some country other than Cyprus. Paraguay or New South Wales or somewhere. He can manage that, surely.’
‘And you will draft a nice letter for him,’ said Selena, ‘explaining his intention to the Capital Taxes Office. One or two little artistic touches, to add verisimilitude, such as the purchase of a grave in the country chosen for retirement— ’
‘I fear,’ said Timothy, ‘that my client has behaved foolishly. At the time of the Turkish invasion of the island, when other British residents were making haste to leave, he made several public statements, reported in the Press, declaring with some vehemence that he himself would do nothing of the kind. He would continue, he said, to run the farm which he had inherited from his mother and would devote his life to restoring the island to peace
and unity.’
‘ “Devote his life”,’ said Selena. ‘Dear me, what a very unfortunate phrase.’
‘Yes, isn’t it? So the Revenue are likely to be a little sceptical about his forming a sudden intention to end his days in Paraguay or New South Wales. No, I am afraid he’ll have to sell his house in Cyprus and become resident somewhere else. Somewhere, of course, where he has no intention of remaining permanently.’
It must have been, I think, at about this point that the telephone rang: there was nothing odd about that. The girl behind the bar answered it and called for Timothy: there was nothing odd about that, either – anyone wanting to communicate, at such an hour of a Friday evening, with one of the junior members of 62 New Square would do sensibly to try the Corkscrew. The telephone was too far for us to eavesdrop without effort: we had no reason to think that the effort ought to be made.
I tried, instead, to learn from Selena and Ragwort whether I too, by living in a country I did not mean to stay in and establishing a domicile in one I never meant to go to, could save myself a vast sum in capital transfer tax.
‘No,’ said Selena.
‘No,’ said Ragwort.
‘Why not?’ I asked, rather indignantly.
They pointed out that to save tax of £400,000 I would first have to be the heir to a fund worth a million. I conceded with regret that I was not. Neither was Selena. Neither was Ragwort. It seemed – for we had no doubt that in intellect, charm and beauty we were all more deserving than Timothy’s client – an extraordinary oversight on the part of Providence.
Timothy, concluding his telephone conversation, looked a little less cheerful than when it had begun; but he paused at the bar to buy another bottle of Nierstein.
Returning to the table, he refilled Selena’s glass. This, as it turned out, was a pity. Then he filled his own. Ragwort and I were left to fend for ourselves: a trifling discourtesy, but not like Timothy. I began to think that something must be wrong.
Thus Was Adonis Murdered Page 3